Manage Your Army in a Time of War in ‘Of Gods And Men: Daybreak Empire’

This turn-based strategy RPG has you controlling a decent-sized army, looking to gain favor and territory in the land.

Of Gods and Men: Daybreak Empire sees you playing Saaga – a young girl who rode into a holy war alone and was taken in by Ulgen, a wonderful leader. Everything you have learned has been from Ulgen. This holy war, overseen by bored gods and greedy lords, has many people fighting and dying. You are in charge of your own army – one that you need to lead, keep alive, and grow so that you can take over more of the land.

With this newfound power, but despite your army not fully believing in your ability, you must move forward, conquering land, fighting off other armies, and making sure your team is big enough to survive. Of Gods and Men: Daybreak Empire is heavily story-based, with each of the other army leaders having a lot to say about you and your team. You get to experience their feelings and see your own reactions to much of what goes on.

When it comes to gameplay, each fight starts out the same with your current army sprawled across a side of the screen. You can swap places and move your team around until you are happy with the configuration before starting the battle. The enemy will start moving and attacking, but once it is your turn you can do the same. The area you are able to move and attack in depends on the character, but you can do this in any order. You can even move a bit, attack, and sometimes move again.

If you decide to attack, a bar will appear on the screen. After a three second countdown, a small spike moves across the bar; it’s your goal to click when it hits the middle of the bar, allowing you to make the strongest attack possible. The closer you are to the center line, the better chances of a stronger attack. Along the same lines as this, if an enemy tries to attack you and misses, there is a chance for a counter attack in the same way. Different types of cavalry are stronger or weaker against others – so you will need to really plan out who you want to attack.

Once you have won your battle, you will be taken back to the map of the world. This map will show you areas that you have conquered, where you need to go, and allow you to build different types of buildings if you have enough gold. Various barracks can be built in order to produce more soldiers of the corresponding type, but producing these new people will also cost gold.

In this map, you can also move your army around and decide who you want within your team. During battles, if someone dies, they are removed from your army and you’ll need to get a new person if you care about numbers. If you die, however, there is no replacing you and the game is over.

Following the campaign will give you more and more of the beautifully-written story behind this super lovely game. Although Of Gods and Men: Daybreak Empire is currently in Early Access (as a beta demo) the game itself is very polished, has lovely music, and a very good story so far.

Of Gods and Men: Daybreak Empire is currently available for free on Itch.io.

Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer, and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, judges many jams and events. Jupiter is also the Adept Games Wizard at Armor Games where she finds free-to-play, browser-based games to bring on board to their web portal.